I wonder how many of you saw this story? It was in the New York Times on Friday (LOL! how many of us bother to read the NYT?), and is actually very useful and informative.
Fourteen refugees, who came in through the UN/US State Dept. Refugee Admissions Program, have been arrested in the last two years on terror charges!
We learned a lot about the alleged terrorist at the heart of the NYT story, Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, last month at the UK Daily Mail. He is an Iraqi-born Palestinian who came here as a refugee via Syria.
Longtime readers may remember that Saddam Hussein had invited Palestinians to Iraq and when his government fell, many moved to Syria and the US kindly began admitting them to the US as refugees.
This story back in 2009 was big news at the time because we don’t take Palestinians in any large numbers in the Refugee Admissions Program.
Here is what the New York Times said on Friday:
WASHINGTON — The arrest of a California man on charges that he traveled to Syria to fight with terrorist groups, then lied about it to the Department of Homeland Security, offers new ammunition for both sides in the fierce debate over the refugee policy of the Obama administration.
Conservatives and some federal law enforcement officials say the case of the Californian, Aws Mohammed Younis al-Jayab, 23, shows that the refugee program leaves the nation vulnerable to terrorism. But Homeland Security officials and Democrats in Congress contend that his arrest demonstrates that the system works.
The system worked for this guy, but how many more Mohammeds are out there?
Before his arrest, Mr. Jayab seemed like a typical young adult: He liked sports cars, studied computer programming at a community college in Sacramento and worked nights as a security guard.
But the federal authorities have charged that Mr. Jayab, who was born in Iraq and came to the United States as a refugee from Syria, traveled to that war-torn country from late 2013 to early 2014 to fight on the side of terrorist groups and then lied about it to the authorities.
[….]
Still, some members of Congress and security experts say the arrest of Mr. Jayab has forced them to question the screening process. Federal court documents show that at least 14 people who came to the United States as refugees have been arrested on terrorism charges in the last two years, including Mr. Jayab.
“I thought that it was very secure until I saw the arrest in California and Texas,” said John J. Farmer Jr., former senior counsel to the federal commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, who is now a professor at Rutgers. “Now, I have my concerns.”
Continue reading here.
P.S. Rural Montanans do have something to worry about!
John J. Farmer Jr. bio and photo here: https://law.newark.rutgers.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/john-j-farmer-jr